As a core component within our Corporate Project Solutions suite of training workshops for Microsoft Project users, this workshop is a perfect partner to our Microsoft Project Foundation and Programmes and People workshops.

• Articulate the key characteristics that make a projects and programmes successful.
• Understand key success factors for successful project teams, and how team dynamics change through the phases and stages of project lifecycles.
• Understand who the key programme-wide stakeholders are and have communications strategies for each stakeholder.
• Be able to match project deliverables to organisational business drivers and provide knowledge-driven project investment appraisals.
• Be able to distil a client’s requirements into an accurately scoped project plan.
• Be able to schedule tasks with duration, work and dependencies and analyse their effect upon the project and also across the programme.
• Understand the importance of project risk management and how risks can be quantified, qualified, and mitigated.
• Be able to effectively analyse work, cost, schedule and earned value performance within projects and programmes.

This first workshop section provides an insight into what project and programme management are all about. It commences with an understanding of what makes for a successful project and why effective planning and execution influence project success. Next, delegates will learn the importance of managing the interrelationships between a project’s fundamental objectives. Finally, the phases and stages of a project’s lifecycle are discussed, together with the key deliverables produced within each stage.

• What is a project?
• Characteristics of a project
• Characteristics of a programme
• Programmes compared to projects
• What makes for a successful project?
• Why do I need to plan?
• Balancing a project’s objectives
• Phases and stages of a project’s lifecycle
• (Alternative) phases and stages of a project’s lifecycle

The second workshop section commences by discussing how projects are initiated and how project teams are created and mobilised.  Next, project stakeholders are considered, along with how to satisfy their needs and communicate effectively with them.  Finally, the importance of understanding and articulating client requirements is investigated, together with project charter creation and techniques for appraising project investments.

• Defining the role of a project manager
• Developing and managing the project team
• Satisfying internal and external stakeholders
• The shortest course in project leadership
• Communicating with a project’s stakeholders
• Understanding a client’s requirements
• Project investment appraisals
• Defining a project charter document

Workshop section three is all about creating flexible forward-looking project plans that integrate effectively within high-level programmes. With the aim of creating a model of the real world that is both accurate and flexible, various project development strategies are discussed. Analysis techniques are introduced to provide an understanding of how and when will be delivered within the project, along with how work and money can be optimised within the project and across the programme.

• Planning a project from the top down
• Project outlines within the overall programme
• Managing milestones programme-wide
• Scheduling tasks with duration values
• Scheduling tasks with dependencies
• Task schedules and timescales
• Spare time for tasks
• Inter-project dependencies
• Project-specific work and cost aggregation
• Work and cost aggregation programme-wide
• Creating responsibility matrices

The fourth workshop section concentrates on managing the plethora of risks that can determine a project’s success – or its failure. Explained in detail are qualitative risk causes & effects and risk qualification together with mitigation strategies should identified risks materialise. Once live, a project’s current performance is compared with key dates and baseline values to ensure agreed date/work/cost objectives can be met. Finally, earned value techniques are explored to ensure projects are continuing to meet their investment criteria as they progress towards completion.

• When and how to manage project risks
• Finding project and programme risks
• Brainstorming risk causes and effects
• Qualifying and quantifying risks
• Ways to mitigate project risks
• Using baselines to create project targets
• Reviewing baseline performance
• Reviewing schedule performance
• Reviewing work and cost performance
• Getting a project back on track
• Introducing earned value management
• Measuring the actual cost of work performed
• Earned value cost variance comparisons
• Earned value schedule variance comparisons
• Decision making using earned value data

The final workshop section considers projects in the latter stages of their lifecycle. By conducting quantitative and qualitive analyses of as-built projects, delegates will gain invaluable lessons that they can apply to future projects.

• Project closure checklists